Redress scheme opens for women who had ovaries removed

Applications to a new scheme for women who had their ovaries removed unnecessarily at a Drogheda hospital will be open to applications from tomorrow.

The new scheme is aimed at women who were excluded from the original Lourdes Hospital Redress Scheme, set up to compensate patients of former obstetrician Michael Neary. The women underwent unnecessary surgery to have their wombs and/or ovaries removed.

The 2007 scheme had excluded 35 women who either had both ovaries or a remaining single functioning ovary removed unnecessarily, rendering them immediately menopausal.

Struck off
Successful applicants will be given awards of between €60,000 and €100,000 each.

Neary was struck off the medical register in 2003 for carrying out an excessive number of hysterectomies at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. An inquiry into his activities was chaired by Judge Maureen Harding Clark and its report was published in 2006.

Sheila O'Connor of Patient Focus welcomed the opening of the scheme.

“At this stage we are just very relieved and really pleased that it has come to this. It is the end of a long process of trying to persuade successive governments that these women deserve to be looked after as well.”

Minister for Health James Reilly announced in July that the new scheme would go ahead. He said he was conscious of the distress that had been caused to the 35 women by virtue of the unnecessary operation and through their exclusion from the original scheme.